


The Opposite of Destruction

by Whoareyou0000



Category: Zombieland (2009)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Apologies, Columbus gets mad, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, IKEA, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Violence, Tallahassee cries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:06:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21747739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whoareyou0000/pseuds/Whoareyou0000
Summary: Tallahassee destroys everything in his path except for Columbus. Columbus sees the best in everyone, including Tallahassee, until one fight draws out the demons of their pasts. Columbus/Tallahassee
Relationships: Columbus/Tallahassee (Zombieland)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 184





	The Opposite of Destruction

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Zombieland, IKEA, or the two guys looting it. 
> 
> Author’s Note: Yes, “Two dudes and a studio” is actually a real display at IKEA. Also, thanks for all of the reviews and Kudos! I’m glad you all like reading about these guys as much as I like writing about them.

“Fuck you, Santa.”

Tallahassee kicks the spindly PVC evergreen with a force that shakes his entire body. It tips over onto the white-tiled floor and breaks in two with an abrupt and satisfying crack. His fingers still vibrating with barely concealed rage, he grips his next victim. The box of opened ornaments soars in a surprisingly aerodynamic fashion and hits a blue and yellow sign proclaiming:

AN IKEA CHRISTMAS IS MAGIC.

The ceramic balls explode in a shower of red and white shards that cover the faux wood walkway in pointy Christmas cheer. Tallahassee steps back and proudly observes the corner of carnage. It is filled entirely with broken glass, tipped over tables, and one large mannequin Santa with a VÖRDA carving knife impaled in his forehead. He rolls his shoulders and abruptly drops the arm holding the metal table leg with a hiss. 

“Ow. Cramp. Cramp. Cramp.”

Columbus drapes his double barrel over his shoulder and turns away from the wrecked display with an audible sigh. The glass crunches under his sneakers.

“I told you to limber up. You never listen to me.” 

“Limber up my ass,” Tallahassee mutters.

He sends one last lamp to the floor with his foot. The crash disrupts the deafening silence. Then he takes a few confident steps across the aisle and joins his partner above a large wire enclosure filled with plush blood-stained reindeer. The kid picks through them with the gun’s muzzle and scrunches his face in disgust at the line of entrails that weave perfectly between the cotton antlers. Patched toothy smiles stare back from the horror within. 

“Why do they make them smile? Reindeer don’t smile. It’s unnatural.” 

Tallahassee volunteers a response with a concealed wince and a blink of a memory. 

“Babies smile when they see smiles. Some kind of reflex.” 

He waits a beat and then gives a swift kick with his cowboy boot. The entire wire enclosure collapses. Bloody stuffed animals fall into a twisted mass grave with their wide unblinking eyes staring up at the two survivors who have entirely different looks on their very human faces. 

Tallahassee snorts, his lips twisted up into an angry sneer.

Columbus’ eyes darken and he shakes his head. He walks off in the opposite direction of the giant blue arrow. Tallahassee follows a few steps behind.

“Whoa, what’s your problem, Miss Ohio?”

The kid turns back, eyes dark and suddenly very sharp. His legs plant firmly apart, and his upper body pushes forward with a boldness Tallahassee has never seen directed his way. 

The kid’s next words come out with the force and aim of a bullet. 

“Why do you have to be such a dick?” 

Tallahassee stops, surprised by this turn of mood. He tosses the table leg to the side without a second glance and cocks his head in response to this unexpected challenge. He instinctively places his hand on the handle of his gun and then pulls it away at once remembering who he is facing. 

“You wanna try that again?” 

Columbus’ nostril’s flare. He looks to the floor, turns a full circle, and then re-approaches with a newer hardness to his face. He pants like he does during those anxiety attacks and his eyes shine with wetness. Tallahassee steps forward, ready to protect and comfort, only to have his partner jump further back and out of his grasp. 

The repulsion on the kid’s face knocks the wind out of him. 

Tallahassee’s offered hand returns to his own forehead and he takes a moment to regain his balance, physical and otherwise. Columbus doesn’t give him that moment, though, because he chooses then to start regurgitating a string of accusations.

“What the fuck is going on with you lately? You’re pissed off all the time, always breaking shit and killing things. You never sleep anymore, and you barely even notice me when we’re not fucking. All you want to do is drink and destroy everything.” 

Tallahassee emits a forced scoff to cover the sound of his racing pulse. He tilts his hat down to hide whatever unshielded emotion might be playing across his face and increases the space between them for the kid’s own good. With a deep ragged breath, he swallows his ripening anger and spits out a bitter response. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Have we met? I am who I am, petunia. In case you haven’t noticed, this here is a zombie apocalypse. Everything was already destroyed before we got here and there ain’t no one left to fix it. There’s just us and the things that wanna kill us and you should be glad you got me and my temper between them and you.” 

Columbus flexes tight blood-drained fists over this gun. His bottom lip puckers out in an adamant pout, something Tallahassee can’t help but find adorable despite his growing desire to rip this kid a real new one.

“No. It wasn’t all destroyed.” The younger man swallows, his eyes shifting to the flattened Christmas display. “That wasn’t destroyed. It was nice, a reminder of something fucking normal, and you had to ruin it because you’re pissed off or feeling something else that you won’t share with me. Don’t pretend this is all about protecting me when it’s clearly about you and your anger. We’re supposed to talk to each other, Tal, it’s part of the deal. If you can’t even do that, then…then what’s the point?”

Tallahassee screws his face into a twisted smile and turns away. The words feel like stab wounds. He thought he’d guarded himself against this kind of attack long before he met this young man. None of his guns or knives can fix this because that is Columbus and he can’t even fathom bringing physical harm to the one person he’s come to care about more than anyone in a very long time. Something must be done with this pain, though, and he finds that he doesn’t need his fists to fight back.

When he turns back around, he’s seeing red. 

“That it? You wanna talk? Share our feelings? Okay, where do we start?” He gestures outward and steps forward. The kid moves further back. “You could tell me about your family because from what I gather they were real far from normal.” Another step and Columbus is backing towards the home office department. “Or how about those nightmares? I know they’re not about zombies because, guess what, you talk in your sleep. Who’s David by the way?” 

The kid takes a few more steps back, even after Tallahassee stops, and actual tears fall down his face now. He swipes them away in a rare fit of rage. Then his eyes dull and his lips quiver as he whispers a final defeated push back against Tallahassee unstoppable force. 

“Fuck you.” 

Columbus retreats along the path, this time in the direction of the big arrow, and disappears around a row of file cabinets. Tallahassee stands completely still, breathing heavily, and tries to sort through what exactly just happened. It takes him a moment to realize that his hands are shaking and that lump in his throat is only growing with each passing moment. He takes a few steps back and lowers himself onto the edge of the only standing table remaining in the holiday department. There he rubs his eyes and tries to slow his speeding heartbeat. 

A thought passes through that makes Tallahassee want to vomit right there in the pile of grinning reindeer. 

What if Columbus actually leaves for good?

It’s too much. He blinks tears away to make room for the red filter again. 

Blood pumping, he plucks a fluid-encrusted toy from the pile and flings it across the space with a frustrated scream. It lands with a squeak somewhere behind the Christmas tree. Nostrils flared, he flings another and then another, knocking down a few plastic signs, some hangers, and a wicker basket. Three more unsatisfying throws and he falls back against the table. The damn things don’t do enough damage. They can’t because they’re soft and nontoxic and god help him adorable. 

Like someone else he knows. 

They can be damaged, though. He’s already proven that today. 

Staring down into that pile of fluff and innards, he focuses on one set of wide fabric eyes and the red filter slowly lifts. He blinks and those eyes turn from felt to a far more real set of blue staring back beneath a mop of curly blonde hair. He sees his baby in a broken crib reflecting his own bright smile and reaching out to be held by his daddy. 

“Buck.” 

He utters the name between sobs. Then he’s on his knees sifting through that pile of guts and stuffing, searching for his own lost son. When he gets to the wire enclosure and then the floor he drops to his hands. He scrapes at it with his fingernails and then gives up, dropping to a sitting position and, for maybe the first time, allowing himself to really truly grieve the violent loss of his baby. 

It’s twenty minutes later when Tallahassee finally rises from the floor and stands on shaky legs. He wipes his salt-burned face with the back of his hand and takes one last look at the fallen enclosure. Now, with his red filter lifted, it’s just a pile of toys waiting to make some kid smile. Some kid who will never come because all the kids are gone now. 

Except there is still one person who searches for joy in a bin full of carnage. 

Tallahassee looks in the direction of Home Office and wipes his eyes one last time. 

“I’m sorry I failed you, Buck. I got someone else to take care of now.” 

Tallahassee holsters his anger alongside an apology and starts forward, following the arrows to a new beginning. He progresses through Home Office to Bathroom to Bedroom. The store is so quiet that he nearly jumps when the heat kicks on. This raises his haunches. Zombieland is quiet, but Columbus is not. The kid is always knocking stuff over or tripping over himself or just rambling on about something nerdy that Tallahassee pretends to understand just to hear him talk for a few minutes longer.

Maybe Columbus really is gone this time. 

Suddenly, he has to find him immediately. 

“Marco?” 

It’s their code for “where are you,” a geeky game Columbus started that stuck, and the thing they call out when they aren’t in each other’s direct vision. Normally this would be followed by an immediate response because they never separate anymore, at least not for more time than it takes for one of them to drain the snake or drop anchor. Even then the other stands guard outside. 

Tallahassee turns around several times, expecting to see his curly-haired shadow in that space to his side and back chewing on a string and smiling stupidly for no apparent reason. He feels Columbus like a ghost on his shoulder because that is where he belongs, and the kid’s absence ignites a rare panic within his tough exterior. 

“Marco?” 

Tallahassee stands in the middle of a sea of beds. The low lighting makes it hard to recognize details in this part of the store, but he recalls most of it from their past two days of casing the place. The entire perimeter is lined with mockup apartments with fully furnished bedrooms, two of which they’ve already used in various creative ways. 

It is Columbus’ idea to sleep their way through every “bedroom,” and Tallahassee doesn’t argue when it comes to beds and Columbus.

One in particular catches his attention, the next one on their list. He heads towards “Two dudes and a studio” and enters the small predominantly blue space with loud and obvious steps. Best not to frighten the kid and end up on the wrong end of that shotgun. A futon sits in one corner and the other holds a fake TV resting atop a wooden stand with all kinds of cabinets and drawers. The blue shag rug muffles his footsteps and that’s when he hears the briefest sign of hope. 

“Polo.”

It’s barely a whisper, but it’s there and it’s coming from the wall behind him. He about-faces and follows the dark blue floral wallpaper around into a shiny white-tiled bathroom and through a second doorway into a small bedroom containing a queen-sized bed and nothing more. A pillow is missing. He stands for a moment, listens to Columbus’ anxious breathing, and plants himself on the floor against the bed. Now, it’s time for the first part of his apology.

“I’m staying over here, Col. I’m just gonna talk for a minute and then you can decide what happens from there, okay?” The kid doesn’t move, and he takes this as an affirmative. “Look, I don’t know how to do this. You’re the touchy feely one in this relationship and I tend to like it that way. So, I’m just gonna start and hope you can understand what I’m trying to say.” 

He clears his throat and begins.

“You’re right. I’m a dick, but I didn’t used to be this way. I used to have a son named Buck. He was…my reason to not be a dick.”

There is shift on the floor across the room. Tallahassee doesn’t turn around yet for fear he’ll lose his courage to continue. 

“Buck loved Christmas. The whole thing…I used to dress up as Santa and bring him presents and make him those sugar cookies…the precut ones with the little snowman faces. We’d decorate the tree together and he made me an ornament at daycare…a little snowflake with his picture in it. He never stopped smiling at this time of year.” He takes a deep breath and dives in. “Then the zombies came, and I lost him. I didn’t have any other reason to not be a dick, so I guess I went a little Texas Chainsaw Massacre on those undead motherfuckers…and anyone who got in my way.” 

Sneakers squeak on fake wood and he starts to hope. 

“Then I met you, a scrawny college kid alone on a highway who didn’t stand a chance without my help…sorry but it’s true. Suddenly, I had a reason to be…less of a dick.” 

There is rustling behind him, light footsteps, and then Columbus is on the floor to his right with his knees pulled up to his chest. He doesn’t look at Tallahassee, only places a single hand on his snakeskin arm. Tallahassee wants to accept this comfort, but he has one more thing to say and it laces his voice with an emotional crackle.

“I know I fucked up, kid, and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go off on your own. I really hope you stick with me, though, because you’re my reason now and this thing between us…” He chances a look sideways and finds his partner staring back with a devotion that he can’t possibly deserve. “…I wanna build it, not destroy it.” 

The kid perks up and his red-rimmed eyes widen. He carefully laces their fingers together and Tallahassee gives a relieved exhale.

“I..I’m not going anywhere, Tal.” He looks around the makeshift bedroom. “Except maybe to a less depressing apartment. Who are these ‘two dudes’ and why can’t they afford a bigger place?” 

“Oh, they definitely share the bed.” Tallahassee chances a smile. “No way a straight guy chooses that wallpaper.” 

Columbus leans forward and kisses him chastely on the lips. When they part, their foreheads touch.

“I’m sorry about your son, but you know it’s not your fault, right? With how intensely you protect me, I can’t even imagine what you would do for your own child.” He squeezes Tallahassee’s hand, and the words sink in, filling a long empty hole in his gut. The kid lets go then and looks to his lap. “Look…zombies are assholes and they deserve to be destroyed. Just…maybe you could let a stuffed animal live every now and then?”

Tallahassee mirrors Columbus’ sincerity with an understanding nod. Then he takes a deep breath, which turns into a playful smile. He pulls something from inside of his jacket. Columbus grabs for it and Tallahassee plays keep-a-way long enough to earn a smile from the other tear-stained face. 

“Consider this the third part of my apology…” The kid finally grips the gift, but Tallahassee doesn’t let go just yet. “…and a promise that I’ll never hurt you again.” 

The stuffed toy is then wedged between them and Columbus holds it with raised eyebrows.

“The reindeer with the creepy smile…and it only has a little blood on it. That’s…that’s so romantic of you. I…I don’t know what to say.” 

Tallahassee shakes his head. “Look closer.” 

Columbus holds the toy under an overhead light and spies the line of loose thread where the shit-eating toothy grin has been meticulously cut away from the face, leaving a slightly less disturbing mammal. 

This time Columbus grips Tallahassee with both hands and kisses him with intensity. 

They move up to the bed a few minutes later and decide to test out this setup meant for “two dudes” who are most decidedly in love.


End file.
